Wednesday, October 19, 2005

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has two correspondents named Corddry: veteran Rob Corddry and his younger brother, newcomer Nate Corddry. However, there have been other Corddrys in the news biz.

Mr. Corddry, I am well aware of the present deficiencies in the Armed Forces of this country. When you have a report, as we did recently, that six out of 10 Continental United States Army Divisions simply could not pass a readiness test: that two out of three divisions that were to be allocated to the so-called Rapid Deployment Force could not meet a readiness test. And in most cases, that failure to meet the test was because of a lack of manning requirements, an inability to fill many of the slots in those divisions. Yes, I have seen figures that indicate that perhaps as of this very month that there is a shortage of about 104,000 in the ranks between E–4 and E–9. And there were public reports not long ago about ships that could not leave American ports because of a lack of crews. I talked to one of the leading former chiefs of Naval operations in my office a few weeks ago, who told me about 25,000 Chief Petty Officers being short. But, I think that that is clearly related to the fact that, going back to the time when the all-volunteer Army was created in 1973 — and I worked hard for it and supported it — we simply have failed to keep pace with the cost of living. — Presidential candidate John B. Anderson, 1980-09-21

Neither Rob nor Nate Corddry was out of grade school in 1980, so it seems sensible to suspect that "Mr. Corddry" above is someone else. In fact, it is Charles Corddry, a familiar face to long-term fans of PBS' Washington Week in Review. Charles Corddry was a prize-winning reporter for the Baltimore Sun. I have found remarkably little personal information about him on the web — indeed, the 1980 Presidential debates dominate his Google listings — but Corddry is a fine name for real journalism or fake journalism.